Midnight Lamp (11 page)

They reached the perimeter. The towers of downtown stood in the distance, like a spaceport in the haze; like a toy. The crowd surged, a single animal, towards this new event. Agent Phillips lifted a loop of tape from one of the plastic supports, and stood aside to let them through. ‘It’s the tape that attracts them,’ she remarked. ‘Do you get that in England? Shootings, murder, rape, no one sees a thing. The tape appears and the assholes gather.’

‘Yes,’ said Fiorinda. ‘We get that too.’

She could already smell the blood. Been here, done this, oh yes. What made me think it would stop? She was going to look guilty, because she was NOT going to be able to look surprised. A fat man in a Redsox teeshirt stared avidly. If you have no reason to be here, she thought, then get the fuck away. Or
may something happen to teach you a lesson
, shit for brains…

She had blessed, but never cursed anyone before. It felt surprisingly good.

Beside the long vans a broadly built, bearded black man was waiting. ‘I’m honoured to meet you,’ he said, ‘Mr Preston, Mr Pender, Ms Slater… Harry, thanks for your promptness. Philemon Roche.’

He showed his badge, and surveyed the three with gravitas slightly tempered by the satisfaction of someone meeting celebrities. He had a marked Jamaican accent, which put them off balance.

Ax nodded, dismissing the badge. ‘Are you going to tell us why we’re here?’

‘I don’t know what Harry told you-’

‘I haven’t told them anything,’ snapped Harry. ‘But I want to say, for the record, I don’t like the way this was done, I think this is insupportable.’

‘Good, that’s good.’ said Roche. ‘Something happened here last night,’ he said to the English experts, ‘that you may be able to help us with. The police have taken a break. Your visit is off the record, I assure you there will be no publicity.’ He addressed Fiorinda. ‘Ms Slater, we’re about to view human remains. They died violently. I’d like to leave my partner here, to keep a h’eye on those idle citizens, but would you prefer to have a woman with you?’

‘I’ll be all right.’

‘Very well, please follow me. Keep to the tracking. I know you’ve had experience, I’m sure I don’t have to remind you: touch nothing.’

They followed Roche, Harry trailing behind like a sullen teenager, along a quaking plastic walkway and into a hollow in the wasteland; into the butcher’s shop smell. ‘There’s a regl’r population,’ remarked Agent Roche, the familiar cadence of his speech weirdly at odds with his manner, and with this alien place. ‘Winos, junkies, crazies, long term homeless. Ferals. One of the ladies from the Daycare Centre at the street was doing a soup run yesterday. She says she walked right past this dell around six pm and saw no’t’in. The bodies were reported by an anonymous call just about dawn this morning, and I was alerted at once. Be careful of this last section, h’it’s unsteady. In here.’

They passed between tall white screens. On a slab of waste concrete two bodies, male and female, had been hung from a frame of metal rods, the woman by her wrists, the man by his heels. Their injuries were extreme. They had been young, and brightly dressed, from the tatters of clothing that remained. Body jewellry still glinted: earrings, a nose stud. A flag of blonde hair, a close cropped head dyed cobalt blue. Blood had pooled under them: still viscous, looking like melted chocolate ice cream. The rods were copper plumbing pipes. A sheet of canvas had been stretched behind the corpses: there were English words scrawled on it. Flies buzzed, on the bodies and the blood.

‘Well-?’

Agent Roche looked at them expectantly. The woman’s face and torso had been flayed, the skin peeled back meticulously from around her staring eyeballs. Her liver dangled, deliberately on display.

‘You have Aztecs?’ said Ax. ‘Commiserations. We get loonies too.’

‘Hm… See that?’ Agent Roche, seeming disappointed, pointed to a shallow pit in the ground, to the left of the altar and ringed in stones, natural water-worn stones that didn’t belong to the wasteland. It held newly flensed bones. ‘Those aren’t human, they are the leg bones of a horse and a hound,’ said the FBI man. ‘There are other details I t’ink you would recognise, if you look close?’

‘So you have Celtic Nazi wannabes,’ said Fiorinda, cutting the crap. ‘I do apologise, on behalf of the four nations, but I still don’t get it. Why are we here?’

Agent Roche looked at Harry, Harry looked at the ground. ‘Well, ma’am,’ said Roche, ‘The fact is, human sacrifice as a h’act of public worship is not a common pastime in LA. We get ritual murder. We get snuff, faked and genuine. We have folks who are convinced they are vampires or werewolves and behave accordingly. We have all kinds. The first of
these
dates from a year and a half ago. It became a federal investigation after what we now t’ink was number four: this is number eight, far as we know. All of them in LA County. Always in empty places, desert wastes, always the pair, nubile young male and female. No sexual element, far as can be determined after the way they’re killed. Always the blood-letting, though the method varies, and the bodies left on display. And the fresh animal bones, horse or hound, ritually placed at the scene.

‘But you know what keeps me awake at night? We’ll question the ferals. We may hear there was a party here last night. We’ll examine the ground. Forensics will tell us between thirty an’ forty people attended the rites, they’ll promise us DNA profiles, they’ll promise us shoe-sizes—’

Harry gave a sharp, impatient sigh. Roche ignored him, and continued.

‘And it will go nowhere. Statements will vanish, and the witnesses will never be found again. There’ll be no forensic evidence worth a shit. If there is any lead to follow, that might identify a single one of the congregation, it will close up, it will fold down, it will slip t’rou our hands, and there will be
not’in
we can do.’

He watched their faces. The English experts looked politely blank.

‘Well, that’s it. Far as the LAPD is concerned, we cleared the site and called you in because this is a copy-cat crime, a replication of a ritual murder MO known in England, h’in the green-nazi occupation. You should know, Harry and I are working for the same boss. I called you because I hoped you could break the spell, an’ tell me somethin’ real while the scene is fresh.’

‘This happened
last night
.’ said Fiorinda, not a question but a realisation.

Roche nodded. ‘On the night of your reception. But don’t alarm yourself: the date was prob’ly fixed before you left h’England. H’it’s Beltane in three days.’

‘They follow the so-called Celtic calendar?’

‘Yes, ma’am. We t’ink they repeat the English procedure way a scientist would, not knowing what is essential, an’ what is jus’ old wives tales.’

Fiorinda was tallow pale, but she studied the tableau in silence, without flinching. At last she turned from the bodies, and considered the FBI man.

‘Do you believe in magic, Mr Roche?’

‘The LAPD don’t. Their experience is, evil always turns out to be of mean, ugly living human origin. At the Bureau we are divided. Me… I was never so sure that witchcraft doesn’t exist. You tell me, Ms Slater. Is what happened here part of a new science, ugly as gunpowder? Or is it straight from hell?’

‘Agent Roche,’ said Ax, ‘Could we continue the discussion further off?’

‘You’re right.’

They had been standing in the warm miasma of death as if before a carved alterpiece, a brutal sculpture that required hushed voices, but no revulsion. They followed the walkway again, and stopped by the white vans. The crowd had moved off. The silence, the stillness, where there should be busy police: the absence of the ritual that was the opposite of murder, was uncanny.

‘Ms Slater,’ said Agent Roche. ‘A straight question. Was that magic?’

Fiorinda raised her eyebrows. ‘It looked like murder to me. What was the writing? The stuff about washing in lamb’s blood? And a little child shall lead them? That’s not Celtic, that I know of.’

‘H’it’s from the Bible. They leave all kinds of scriptural quotes, we think it’s done to confuse. Christian scripture, Muslim, Neo-Aztec, Irquois: also Satanist, Voudoun. It seems they want the police to believe they’re some homegrown, neighbourhood blood-cult… You don’t know your Bible, Ms Slater?’

‘No. I don’t like religion.’

Sage, who hadn’t said a word, glanced at his brat, and smiled.

‘But you know the purpose of the rite that was performed here?’

‘Yes.’

Roche sighed. ‘Will you tell me?’

‘Human sacrifice is taboo, of course, but the forbidden is always powerful. The blood scarifice is committed when you need a big result: if you dare.’

‘So every time it’s performed, this ceremony would make some leader or sacred person stronger in evil magic?’

Fioirnda shrugged. ‘Evil, you could safely say. “Magic” only if there’s potential in the group. A million times nothing is nothing.’

‘Would the magican, or magicians, need to be present?’

‘Where’s Harry?’ asked Fiorinda, looking around. ‘Where did he go?’

Harry was no longer with them, and they didn’t know when he’d left. Fiorinda’s question broke a spell. Roche seemed to realise the distress that her frosty manner belied. He took out a phone, and turned away to speak.

‘Harry’s back at the street,’ he reported, ‘I should let you join him. Mr Preston, Mr Pender, and Ms Slater, I apologise for havin’ put you through this. I t’ought it might be our breakthrough. If I did wrong, I’m sorry.’

He almost offered his hand, thought better of it; and simply nodded.

‘You won’t see this reported. We’re not allowing the ritualists any publicity, and I know you’ll respect that. I’m glad to have met you. I’ll be in touch.’

Karen Phillips walked with them, making sunny conversation. Harry was staring through the wire mesh of the fence around the playground: which was empty now. Phillips asked him in an undertone. ‘Are you okay?’

‘I’m fine,’ he snapped. ‘I’ll take over.’

She shrugged, and headed back to the butcher’s shop.

Harry said, ‘Oh, shit.’ He stumbled to the kerb, and sat there, head in his hands. The few passers-by looked at him curiously. Sage tried to put his arms around Fiorinda, but she evaded him, shaking her head, and tugged on the door of the automatic limo. It wouldn’t open.

‘Shall we go?’ said Ax, ‘Mr Loman? We’re a little conspicuous here.’

Harry turned on him, wild-eyed. ‘How can you believe in the existence of a good God?’

‘How can you believe in the American Dream?’ inquired Ax. ‘Each to their own.’ He took out a cigarette and paced up and down, rolling it between his fingers. He had no sympathy. He was furious with Lopez; and with himself, for getting suckered into this.

‘Ax,’ said Fiorinda. ‘I don’t think he’d ever seen anything like that before.’

‘Oh, really? Welcome to our world, Mr Loman. What’s the problem? I’d have thought bloody human sacrifice was just the thing to get bums on seats.’

‘It’s LOPEZ,’ wailed Harry. ‘Could you bastards fucking at least give me my right
fucking
name when you insult me-’

A message passed between the Triumvirate partners. It said,
this is where we turn him…
Fiorinda settled on the kerb by the A&R man, and dug in her bag for her smokes tin. Ax and Sage sat on the other side.

‘Did he give you no warning?’ asked Fiorinda. ‘The bastard.’

‘He’d had you called. He said I mustn’t say anything. I am so fucking sorry you had to get that call. I am outraged that you were treated this way. The bastard outranks me, and I should say
sir
… Is that cannabis, Fiorinda?’

‘English Government approved. It’s a gentle blend, it really does calm your nerves. They let me keep them, remember, when they searched us before the injections thing. For personal use.’

She handed him a green-skinned Ananda. Harry accepted, with a shaking hand. ‘You, you can get Maryjanes on the grey market if you run out. I can do that for you. You don’t understand. I could have
known
them.’

‘Why didn’t you tell us, Harry?’ asked Sage. ‘You didn’t say anything about butchery when you pitched your pitch. You only mentioned a movie.’

‘I
did
tell you!’ Harry wailed. ‘I told you there was
evidence
. There’s strong rumours of a Fat Boy from inside sources, and there are these sacrifices. Same as in England, and we all know why
that
was happening… I didn’t know you’d be shown dead bodies… I didn’t know it would be so soon, so
crude
. I’m a movie producer. I know Kathryn Adams. I believe in the power of the entertainment industry, I wanted to use that power for good. The President asked for me on his team, would I say no? I was a courier.’ Harry wiped his eyes. ‘I could have known them. The victims are Hollywood scruffs, the kind of kids who’ll follow the bogey-man down any dark alley if he says
I can get you this invite
. Oh, fuck, they knew it wouldn’t stop until they were dead. I can’t. I’ve—I’ve—’

‘Why is your friend Roche so sure there’s a connection?’ asked Ax, taking the Ananda. ‘The police fail to solve things all the time, in our country.’

‘Nobody’s
sure
. If we were sure, my God, we wouldn’t be here, the Vireo lab would be history. You heard him. The FBI are blocked. I don’t know everything, but I think the kind of thing that happens tells them it can only be the Pentagon. And the sick truth is, Vireo could have a use for the dark force of things like this. We know that. You know it.’

‘Who are these people?,’ wondered Fiorinda. ‘Who are you working for?’

‘The Committee. It’s called the Committee. There’s Roche and his partner. An FBI chief, who is Fred’s man. Some high-up guy in the funding establishment, who is scared to death but can’t go public. Others. They answer to Fred Eiffrich, nobody else.’ Harry caught up with himself, ‘Uh, I shouldn’t tell you.’

‘The feeling you have now,’ Sage passed the illicit cigarette, ‘As if someone just tore a limb from your own body: hang onto that. It’s your sanity talking. Let it guide you. Don’t start thinking you should shrug and accept.’

‘I wanted to make my movie,’ whispered Harry. ‘I’m sorry I did this to you, I’m sorry about that bastard Roche… I just wanted to get you guys over here.’